As Syria embraces Paris climate deal, it’s the United States against the world

President Trump has put America at odds with the rest of the world, literally, when it comes to the goal of combating climate change.

At an international climate conference in Bonn on Tuesday, Syria announced its plans to join the Paris climate accord — an agreement forged in 2015 for nations to band together to slash global carbon emissions. That now leaves the United States as the only country to disavow the deal, after Trump this year announced intentions to withdraw from the agreement.

According to news reports and people who were present Tuesday, the Syrian delegation to the talks announced the war-torn country’s intention to ratify the Paris agreement. Separately, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency, lawmakers in Damascus last month “approved a draft law on ratifying Syria’s accession to the Paris Climate Agreement.”

The move comes after the only other holdout, Nicaragua, announced plans to join the Paris agreement in September. Nicaragua initially had refused to join the agreement in 2015 because its leaders felt the accord did not go far enough in compelling nations to reduce their carbon emissions. But in joining the deal this fall, the country’s president noted that it is the “only instrument we have” to unite the world around the goal of staving off the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

“They said at the plenary that they will join Paris agreement,” said Safa’ Al Jayoussi, executive director of IndyACT, a nongovernmental organization working on climate change policies in the Arab world, of Syria.

“It only shows how urgent is the climate change solution for us in the region, with the severe drought that is hitting,” she said.

Syria’s decision to join the accord brought another round of rebukes for the Trump administration.

“As if it wasn’t already crystal clear, every single other country in the world is moving forward together to tackle the climate crisis, while Donald Trump’s has isolated the United States on the world stage in an embarrassing and dangerous position,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

Trump in June announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the climate agreement, an extraordinary move that baffled American allies and threatened to undermine global efforts to slow the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Trump’s decision drew swift, sharp condemnation from foreign leaders, environmental groups and corporate titans, who argued that the U.S. exit from the Paris accord would represent a failure of American leadership in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence.

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump proclaimed at the time. He added that he would consider rejoining the deal if the United States could reenter on more favorable terms. Other countries rejected that notion, saying individual countries already have the freedom to alter their pledges to reduce emissions.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement cannot actually be finalized until near the end of Trump’s term because of the legal structure and language of the accord.

But with the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases essentially walking away from the pact, scientists and policymakers have said it would be nearly impossible for the world to realize its goal of limiting global warming to below a 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) rise above preindustrial temperatures.

Brady DennisBrady Dennis is a national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on the environment and public health issues. He previously spent years covering the nation’s economy. Dennis was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for a series of explanatory stories about the global financial crisis. Follow